Getting people to consume news these days is like trying to get them to eat broccoli: one needs to accompany it with cheese, or something a little more appetizing to make it palatable.
In my country, the Philippines, the journalistic version of “cheese” is journalists exploring novel ways to deliver news in the age of social media and short attention spans. These methods have ranged from crafting catchy headlines and fancy graphics to reporters showing their “fun” or “more human” sides in short-form vertical videos and pushing out podcasts and newsletters.
Now, getting young people to consume news? That’s a whole other battle. As a journalist who is part of Gen Z, I know firsthand that more than just incentive is needed to influence my generation’s diet of information.
Based on the Reuters Digital News Report published in 2023, the vast majority (85%) of Filipinos under 35 said they are interested in news, but 81% also said they avoid consuming it. And only about a third (36%) said they can trust the news most of the time. I spent my time as a Hurford Youth Fellow at the World Movement for Democracy early 2024, trying to answer the questions; “How do we build an appetite for news among millennials and Gen Z?” and “How might we, as journalists, serve young people better?”
To answer these questions, I conducted focus groups and held 1-on-1 interviews with 20 Filipinos between the ages of 18 and 34 to understand their relationship with news. I also spoke with journalists in the Philippines to understand how they approach news delivery for young people, as well as with newsrooms and engagement journalism experts outside the country who are dealing with the same issues of news distrust, disinterest, and avoidance.
Here are some of my key takeaways from these discussions:
1) We have a highly conscious, pickier, and skeptical audience.
People often assume that the younger generation is disengaged from current issues. Yet my research revealed otherwise. Young people are actually quite engaged politically – on national issues, climate change and the environment, public health issues and serving underrepresented communities, among others. They care about the world around them.
Young people are informed, and they want to be informed. However, young people don’t consume all news. They seek out news and information based on their needs and interests, and from sources that they trust. I found that young Filipinos are selective of the news they will allow into their lives. They control their diet of information by avoiding news that is boring or uninteresting, unrelatable, emotionally distressing, or makes them feel powerless.
In addition, “today, you shape your own identity as a media user from one year of age,” says Aslak Gottlieb, a Danish journalism professor who specializes on projects relating to youth. “You don’t believe in authorities or brands, information to you is given peer-to-peer or from persons.”
2) Do more listening. Talk to young people.
A resounding request from the young people with whom I spoke is to make the news experience more interesting and easier to understand.They said short-form vertical videos, such as Instagram Reels, are a very welcome development. But more than that, if we want young people to access trustworthy, verified information from the news, we must be more interactive. For example, journalists should ask questions that get them to think about their own experiences or talk to young people on the street and show that in their news stories. Personal stories are very engaging for youth. Younger readers also asked journalists to use more conversational language.
Stories that offer ways to act may also draw in youth because they provide a chance to engage and empower them. In Malaysia, young people asked The Fourth, an award-winning investigative media company, “What’s the point of telling a story without giving us a solution?” when they published a documentary that did not highlight a way for them to help or act, its cofounder Ian Yee told me in an interview.
3) Get young people involved in news production.
Many of my conversations with newsrooms and experts in other parts of the world drive home how important it is for the media to do more outreach. This provides a chance for young people to better understand how the media works, ask questions, and even get firsthand experience in the world of news production.
For example, The Fourth holds content creation and journalism workshops. In these workshops, the journalism team gets to ask young people about their news interests. And in the US, MediaWise hosts the youngest team of fact-checkers in the world, called the Teen Fact Checking Network (TFCN).
“Being able to see themselves in the news is powerful,” said Alex Mahadevan, director of MediaWise, referring to young people. The TFCN regularly publishes lively, Reels-style fact checks by teenagers, for teenagers.
“[Our teen fact checkers] engage their audience because their audience sees someone who looks like them telling them the news. And I think that is so much more effective because I think it levels the power dynamics.”
So, what can newsrooms do to engage youth in consuming media? First off, journalists need to adapt to a new mindset without letting go of the values behind journalism, as suggested by Gottlieb. He recently finished hosting a workshop with 70 young people and editors that sought to define the news values most important for Gen Z.
Newsrooms also need to spend more time talking to young people about what they care about and what their struggles are, and then focus on these themes. Talking to younger staff in newsrooms is the usual practice in Philippine media to gain perspective on the interests of audiences their age. But it also bodes well for newsrooms to speak with young people outside the newsroom to gain a wider perspective.
The Fourth, for example, conducts interviews with university students to understand their interests. Carrie Brown, founding director of the Engagement Journalism program at CUNY’s journalism school, suggests setting up listening posts outside libraries and grocery stores and talking to people as they stop by.
Finally, media should consider creating news services for young people and by young people. Giving them the opportunity to get involved in the news-making process opens doors to get them interested in news.
Mahadevan said that not all teens in the TFCN started out as news lovers or readers. But without necessarily meaning to, they were able to convert them into people very interested in the news because the teens were involved in the process of pitching and producing the fact-checks.
Will we ever solve the interest and trust problem? I have high hopes that we will. What’s key is not to treat young people as just media consumers. They are, and should be treated as, members of a community. They want to be able to connect with people around them, be good, informed citizens, and make use of the information that they are consuming. By making this our North Star, we as journalists are better positioned to connect meaningfully with young people and build their appetite for news.
*Celine Samson is head of VERA Files’ online verification team. She is a 2024 Hurford Youth Fellow.
This article first appeared in the World Movement for Democracy website.
